International Journal of Applied Linguistics最新文献

In this paper, we explore how and why the realisation of the ritual act of congratulating may turn out to be challenging for foreign learners of Chinese. Congratulating and other ceremonial ritual acts are not only used when someone participates in an actual ritual event: they are also required when they are mentioned in mundane events, like casual interactions when someone talks about a family birthday or wedding. We define congratulation as an interactional move and systematically examine its conventional realisation patterns through a typology of speech acts. We approach congratulating moves by combining a speech act-anchored analysis with the field of study abroad and interaction ritual research. The results of our analysis show that various ritual occasions may trigger different types of inappropriate uses of congratulating by foreign learners of Chinese.

In this study, we examine how criticising as a disciplinary action is conventionally realised in Chinese classroom contexts. By so doing, we provide a two-fold contribution to the current special issue dedicated to Willis Edmondson. First, we examine criticising in an innovative way, by going beyond its traditional interpretation as a speech act, that is, we approach it as an interactional phenomenon which is conventionally realised by a cluster of expressions and speech acts. Second, we propose a bipartite approach to examine why and how instances of criticism as a disciplinary action in Chinese may puzzle foreign learners of Chinese.

This study aims to explore how verb frames can potentially influence text difficulty and shed new light on text evaluation. Different from previous works focusing mostly on lexical frequencies, this paper explores semantic categories of verbs and their correlation with the difficulty levels (DLs) of textbooks. Based on a corpus of nine sets of primary school Chinese textbooks, verb-frame diversity and distribution trends by difficulty levels were examined. The results show that the diversity of verb frames has a strong positive correlation with difficulty levels. The distribution trends of the frames largely correspond with the three cognitive tiers proposed in the skill theory for language development: the sensory–motor, representational, and abstract tiers. This study introduces verb frames as a salient semantic factor in text analysis and proposes that verb-frame-related features have the potential to be utilized in the evaluation of leveled instructional materials and readability assessment.

In this paper, I explore the interactional phenomenon of evasion by using Edmondson and House's (1981) typology, which divides speech act categories into ‘Substantive’ and ‘Ritual’ speech acts. First, I examined which speech acts are used by native Chinese speakers and learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) to realise evasive interactional responses in the Chinese linguaculture. Second, I compared the ways in which native speakers of Chinese and CFL learners realise evasions. Data were collected from 20 CFL learners and 20 native Chinese speakers, who completed a Discourse Completion Test featuring conflict scenarios such as a choice between lying and hurting someone's feelings. The results showed that the most frequented speech in evasive responses are Opine and Tell. Native Chinese speakers tend to use internal modification in the form of downgraders and honorifics, while CFL learners tend to use external mitigators.

The widespread use of metadiscourse is vital to the study of academic discourse and genre analysis. This article focuses on the concept of metadiscursive verb patterns (MVPs) and examines their variation in English research articles across four domains representing hard/soft-pure and hard/soft-applied disciplines. Based on a bottom-up investigation of a self-compiled corpus, three findings are highlighted: (1) the crucial rhetorical roles of MVPs were established by their distinct functions in knowledge construction; (2) significant interdisciplinary variations of MVPs reflected the typical written conventions shared by writers of different disciplinary communities; and (3) the association between (sub-)categories of MVPs and disciplines foregrounded the most popular rhetorical strategies for using MVPs and salient disciplinary features. These findings are discussed in terms of the factors governing the use of MVPs and identification of disciplinary boundaries. Pedagogical considerations for understanding MVPs and proper rhetorical strategies for using these tools are discussed.

With the deepening of globalization, multilingualism has emerged as a common phenomenon, and English has gradually developed into a hub language. In this context, Peter Siemund's edited book, Multilingual Development: English in a Global Context delves profoundly into multilingual upbringing and development from an innovative perspective of English as a global lingua franca. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the book combines insights from linguistics, sociology, psychology, and education to investigate how individuals grow up in today's interconnected world and discusses various aspects that influence their language development with a focus on the pivotal role of English. Key issues such as language policy, identity, and the pedagogy of English as a second language are examined in various geographical and social settings. Logical, coherent, and accessible, the book provides valuable perspectives on multilingualism and offers nuanced insights for scholars, policymakers, and educators, which can serve as an essential reference for anyone interested in multilingual development.

To date, most studies that explore the differences in motivation between content and language-integrated learning (CLIL) and non-CLIL learners have been mainly quantitative or have not controlled for differences in socio-economic status (SES). While many researchers agree that CLIL learners tend to have greater motivation than non-CLIL learners, there has been little explanation of the reasons behind this difference, perhaps partly because the field lacks studies from the perspective of CLIL students themselves. Based on the L2 motivational self-system and the construct of self-concept, this study employed a mixed-methods approach to explore CLIL and non-CLIL learners’ current and future self-visions. Fifteen-year-old learners in the Madrid region (n = 348) completed a questionnaire that considered their SES levels as well as experiences related to the scales of English self-concept, academic self-concept, and teacher expectations. The same learners were then invited to take part in focus groups in which researchers delved into the reasoning behind their motivation. Despite no significant difference in SES levels between CLIL and non-CLIL learner groups, CLIL participants are found to display a slightly more positive self-concept and more robust ideal L2 self-visions, which may explain the perceived greater motivation among CLIL learners to study (in) English. Furthermore, the L2 ought-to self is found to be a secondary, yet potentially positive force toward higher motivation.

In this introductory paper, we first present the background of the present special issue dedicated to Willis Edmondson. We first point out why Edmondson provided a ground-breaking contribution to the field of applied linguistics and why it is particularly timely to edit a special issue centering on his framework. We also argue that Edmondson's bottom-up and strictly language-anchored view on speech acts and interaction is particularly useful to examine the learning of Chinese as a foreign language, by going beyond exoticizing and overgeneralizing views of the Chinese linguaculture. Second, we briefly present what can be regarded as the heart and soul of the Edmondsonian framework, that is, a typology of speech acts and a related procedure through which the relationship between speech acts in interaction can be captured. Third, we present a research procedure that we outlined in our previous work, and which helps implementing the Edmondsonian model in the pragmatic study of foreign language learning. Finally, we present the contents of the special issue.

To date, second language (L2) pragmatics research has predominantly focused on learners’ oral communication, with digital communication being much less examined. In addition, although L2 pragmatics has mainly investigated speech acts, self-praise has not been examined from the L2 perspective. Therefore, this study investigates instances of self-praise posted by learners of Chinese on social networking sites. Data were collected from 20 advanced learners of Chinese who were asked to share instances of self-praise they posted on their WeChat Moments. Altogether, 61 learners’ self-praise posts in L2 Chinese and 100 instances of self-praise from 20 Chinese native speakers were collected. The learners’ Chinese self-praise was analyzed in terms of different pragmatic strategies and emoji uses, with comparisons against the native speakers’ practices. Similarities and differences were analyzed between the two groups’ self-praise strategies and their emoji use in self-praise posts. The findings showed that the advanced learners were able to employ the three major types of self-praise strategies in their self-praise posts on WeChat Moments. However, their repertoires of individual self-praise strategies and emojis were not as wide as those of native speakers. In addition, the learners showed divergences from the native speakers in terms of their preferred self-praise strategies and culture-relevant emojis.

Dates: August 11–16, 2024

Venue: Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre

Conference format: Hybrid

Website: https://aila2024.com/

Call for proposals: https://aila2024.com/call-for-proposals/

Sarah C. K. Moore, University of Maryland College Park, [email protected]